Acting mayor Stephen Lawrence assures the community of Dubbo, it's business as usual for the council.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
"There's no halt with council, and all the day-to-day operations of council continue as they must under law," Cr Lawrence said.
"Obviously we're having these difficulties in the group of 10 councillors and the mayor on indefinite medical leave.
"But these matters will be worked through, and I'm confident they'll be worked through on the short term, and they will have absolutely no impact on the community in terms of service provision and so forth."
Last Wednesday, Dubbo Regional council announced mayor Ben Shields would take indefinite medical leave, effective immediately, with deputy mayor Stephen Lawrence to step into the mayoral role.
A spokesperson for the Office of Local Government said the Local Government Act does not place any limit on the period of time a deputy mayor could act in the mayor's position, and said they held the same powers as the mayor.
"An acting mayor can call an extraordinary council meeting in accordance with relevant requirements," the spokesperson said.
Cr Lawrence said there had been no change in position from the six councillors, who had called for an extraordinary meeting to discuss concerns over the reputation and future of the council and protection of the community.
An extraordinary meeting has been set for April 12, and Cr Lawrence said they were now in the process of completing and determining what motions would be put to that meeting.
"There has been no change of position in terms of the resolve of the councillors to proceed with the motions broadly speaking as filed. But we may need to tweak them in certain respects to make sure they're proper to go to council," Cr Lawrence said.
"Going forward I want staff and the community to be assured that the right thing will be done and there will be transparency."
In light of the past week's events and the public statement calling on members of the community who had concerns about their interactions with any councillor to come forward, Cr Lawrence said he had been contacted directly by a number of people.
"If bullying and harassment of staff or community members has occurred it will be exposed and dealt with," Cr Lawrence said.
"I will never protect the organisation at the expense of doing the right thing. That principle will guide all my actions on this issue and the community would expect no less."
He assured the public the issues would be dealt with "properly" and would be "transparent".
"I won't at this stage go into the details of those obviously, but they will all be dealt with in the proper and appropriate way," Cr Lawrence said.
"I'm not going to speculate about what might happen in terms of the outcomes of different complaints, but I just want to assure the community the complaint process will be a proper and transparent one.
"Any and all complaints made to council will be dealt with according to process, and I want to encourage people to have confidence in those processes."
"I again urge anyone who has [concerns about their] interactions with any councillor or staff member to come forward and contact the DRC internal ombudsman or any councillor they feel comfortable approaching."
The Office of Local Government said it would not comment publicly on complaints they had received.
"The Office of Local Government does not comment publicly on complaints it has or has not received or matters it may or may not be investigating," the spokesperson said.
In the meantime, Cr Lawrence said he has been briefed on a range of issues that had come to his attention in the last two weeks.
"I had a series of meetings yesterday with the mayors PA, other members of corporate staff, the CEO, and then with the councillors, and it's just a process of getting briefed on upcoming events, on important operational issues at council, and so forth."
He said the councillors met on Tuesday night to review the proposed budget for the next financial year.
"We had quite a long budget session going quite late into the evening. It was a good session and very much focused on service provision for the communities," he said.